Parentage assignment through DNA analysis enables different families to be reared together reducing infrastructure costs for family selection programs. It also allows estimates of genetic distance between paired individuals and co-ancestry analysis which are important inbreeding control.

Xelect uses the Fluidigm EP1 platform for genotyping Colony 2 and other parentage assignment software. The advantage of Colony 2 is that in many cases offspring can be assigned to families even in the absence of information from parents.

For the most complex and parentage reconstruction tasks Xelect offers 192 SNP markers and Genotyping-By-Sequencing (GBS). In the case of shellfish which have very high genomic diversity Xelect has developed panels of highly polymorphic (4-12 loci) haplotype markers for use with GBS.

Sex determination

The method works by amplifying a male-specific gene, alongside a ubiquitous control gene. Samples that produce amplifications of both genes are deemed male while those that only amplify the control gene are deemed female. The principle has been exhaustively tested against fish of known sex and is over 99.9% accurate.

This service can be applied to any age of fish from fertilized ova onwards, and is particularly useful for stock management and when validating commercial attempts to produce a mono-sex offspring.

Fig. Example PCR Results of Sex Determination Assay in Atlantic salmon. Individuals showing both FAM and VIC signals were called as male. Those with VIC only signals were classed as female.